The SEC Goes Coach Shopping

Sure, they have Gatorade baths in the Big Ten, but in the SEC the Gatorade is small batch, made from artisanal water.

There are more bowl games to be played between this moment and the BCS championship than there are days between now and the BCS championship, starting with the Gildan New Mexico Bowl—that’s 7-5 Arizona against 7-5 Nevada, if for some reason you did not already know that—on Dec. 15. But with all due respect to those games, and the teams in them, it seems likely that the college football coach-shuffle might well be the most interesting college football story over the next few weeks. Tuesday certainly got things off to a running start, with the announcement that Arkansas had hired away Wisconsin’s wildly successful coach Bret Bielema, and that Auburn had brought in Gus Malzahn—the architect of the team’s offense during its Cam Newton-powered BCS championship season, and briefly the head coach at Arkansas State—to replace the recently and rapidly deposed Gene Chizik.

In many ways, the second hiring was less surprising than the first. Chizik, despite that championship, was never held in the highest regard by his fans, and even as the Tigers won that championship, Malzahn received a good deal of the credit. In that sense, the Malzahn hiring was simply a deferred, roundabout and richly deserved promotion. “In hiring Malzahn, Arkansas State’s head coach of one season and the Tigers’ offensive coordinator for three seasons before that, Auburn AD Jay Jacobs essentially conceded what many already believed—that Malzahn was the real brains behind Chizik’s 2010 national-title team,” Sports Illustrated’s Stewart Mandel writes. “Jacobs isn’t necessarily getting the band back together. He just figured he’d start a new one centered around the lead guitarist.”

“Bielema played at Iowa and coached at Wisconsin, [Alabama coach Nick] Saban was the head coach at Michigan State, [LSU coach Les] Miles was a player and assistant at Michigan and [Texas A&M coach Kevin] Sumlin was a player and assistant at Purdue,” the Cleveland Plain Dealer’s Doug Lesmireses writes. “And now they’re in the best football conference in the country, while the Big Ten is adding teams but losing coaches.”

Or, as ESPN’s Ivan Maisel put it, somewhat more dramatically and much more cinematically, “It’s the greatest assertion of power since Michael Corleone ordered the assassination of the heads of the rest of the Five Families. As long as we’re using Academy Award metaphors, the SEC didn’t just drink the Big Ten’s milkshake. The SEC ate its bratwurst, too.”

Which sounds sort of weird, if not quite as weird as the counter-scenario that Maisel posits—the inverse of the Big Ten champion’s coach leaving to lead a 4-8 SEC team, which would be Nick Saban stepping down at Alabama to coach Iowa. A coaching change is just a coaching change, finally, but this particular one seems to speak to a broader and much remarked-upon sea change in college football, in which all tides seem to flow in the SEC’s direction. “In terms of pay, facilities, ease of winning the league and access to elite recruits (the most important criterion), Arkansas is behind Alabama, Georgia, Florida, LSU, South Carolina and Texas A&M and probably even with Auburn and Tennessee,” Sports Illustrated’s Andy Staples writes. “So Bielema, the winner of three consecutive Big Ten titles, left that league to take what is at best the sixth-best job in the SEC. What does that say about the Big Ten?” It’s what it says about the SEC, and about the broader balance of power in college football, that will fire conversation between now and the New Mexico Bowl, and likely for some time beyond that.

* * *

First things first: Nothing will ever top Utah Jazz for team-nickname incongruity and comedic value. In the NBA alone, the Toronto Raptors—a team named haphazardly in the wake of “Jurassic Park” mania, which seems roughly as goofy today as it would’ve had the Raptors called themselves the Toronto Narnia 10 years later—are pretty close. So even if the New Orleans Hornets are indeed planning on changing their name to the New Orleans Pelicans, as was reported by Yahoo’s Marc J. Spears—and qualified/half-denied by the Hornets—on Tuesday night, it wouldn’t be the silliest name in the NBA.

In some ways, it wouldn’t be all that silly at all—pelicans are more indigenous to New Orleans than are hornets, after all, and the brown pelican is Louisiana’s state bird. There is a certain obvious toughness deficit—”If you got to choose which bird you could be, pelican would easily make the top five, behind eagle, condor, hawk, falcon and emu,” SB Nation’s Bill Hanstock writes. “Okay; top 10 at least.” In the end, though, it’s just a name. A silly one, admittedly, and one that opens the door to all sorts of oof-ish puns. But just a name. New Orleans fans might do well to keep telling themselves that.

* * *

No one anywhere looks forward to April 15. But April 15, 2011 was especially painful in the online poker community, which saw the U.S. Department of Justice shut down the stateside operations of three online poker giants in Ultimate Bet, PokerStars and Full Tilt Poker. PokerStars paid off the debts it owed to its online players. Players say the other two sites haven’t done so in full, which means those Americans who gambled there suddenly found themselves stuck being owed money it was never legal for them to bet in the first place.

Found a good column from the world of sports? Don’t keep it to yourself — write to us at dailyfixlinks@gmail.com and we’ll consider your find for inclusion in the Daily Fix. You can email David at droth11@gmail.com.

Comments (5 of 10)

Funny, Bielema was only able to struggle to 4-4 in a conference that everyone agrees is terrible, but somehow, he's an asset we should be embarrassed to lose. Ok.

By the way, his four B10 wins came against Purdue, Illinois, Minnesota and Indiana. Impressive.

Honestly, I am amazed at all of these articles that regard this as a coup for the SEC and a mark against the B10. Bielema is a terrible coach, and a whiney baby. Good riddance to him. I agree with the Happy Badger - Arkansas hasn't seen the bottom yet.

9:37 am December 6, 2012

War Eagle wrote:

I think this is a good hire. it doesn't fix the prob. though, because the prob. is The AD Jay Jacobs.

8:00 pm December 5, 2012

Bad Ger wrote:

What a joke...Bielema was 7-5 and behind both OSU and Penn State in their Division. His unimaginative offense i.e. hand the ball to Monte Ball is just what the SEC needs if it wants to regress. He did little to improve the program he inherited from Barry Alvarez. Good Riddance!

4:28 pm December 5, 2012

alowl wrote:

We can't afford healthcare, but gots lots o'money for coaches.
I hear the theme from Deliverence in the background!

4:26 pm December 5, 2012

alowl wrote:

We can't afford healthcare, but gots lots o'money for coaches.
I hear the theme from Deliverance in the background!

SPORTS, THE JOURNAL WAY

Be sure to check your Daily Fix all week long. The Fix's daily rundown of the best sportswriting on the Web is joined by features such as The Count, a look at the most revealing sports stats, as well as regular live reports of major sports events. Tell us what you think of the Fix at dailyfixlinks@gmail.com.

When Floyd Mayweather Jr. and Manny Pacquiao step into the ring on May 2, they will fight at the welterweight-class limit of 147 pounds—an odd, seemingly random number that has long held a special mystique.